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Monthly Archives: January 2017

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There are a few common mistakes people may unintentionally make when displaying or transporting photos. We share these common mistakes and several helpful ways to easily avoid damaging photos to ensure a long life time for those special photos.

Best DIY Tips to Your Preserve Photos That Are in Frames and On Display:

Eliminate direct sunlight on the photo. Just like everything else that is exposed to the sun will result in damages to your photograph. Direct sunlight deteriorates and rapidly fades pictures than if they are strategically placed where there will be minimal direct sunlight. If there is no possible way to avoid direct sunlight on the photo than it would be best to invest in a picture frame that has UV protection glass. Without UV protection, severe damage that will be done to the photograph can make photo restoration extremely difficult or even impossible.

Moisture, or water damage, is one of the most common ways a photo can be damaged. This type of damage can be caused by a variety of factors, such as liquid coming into direct contact with the photo, hanging a photo in a moist area (near a kitchen sink or in a bathroom), living in a high humidity climate, or even spraying glass cleaner directly on the glass of the frame (allowing moisture to seep underneath the glass). Once moisture gets trapped in the frame, the photo paper has no way to breathe or dry out it will eventually become damaged.

The best way to avoid most moisture related problems is to prevent your picture from touching the glass of the frame. You can do this by using spacers, or picture frame mats, so there is space created between the picture and the glass for air to flow.

Also, avoid spraying glass cleaner directly on the glass of the frame. Problems often occur when the cleaning solution runs down the side of the glass and comes in contact with the photograph. In time this can cause the photo to stick to the glass and if you try to remove the photo from the glass, it will peel off the emulsion of the photo paper and ruin the picture.

Never expose your pictures to drastic changes in temperature. Pictures are made out of paper and if exposed regularly to temperature fluctuations it will degrade the photo paper more rapidly. Be cautious when storing photographs in attics, garages, or any storage room that doesn’t have proper insulation.

The Test: Photo Scanning Apps vs Professional Photo Scanning Services

New photo scanning apps put the power of preservation into consumers’ hands, but at what cost? We decided to test out the new app and made a startling discovery.

The average family has 5,500 analog photo snapshots fading away from the ravages of time. Watch to see which is the most effective, simple and practical way to solve this problem.. What is the best way to digitize your entire lifetime of photo snapshots?

This YouTube shares a fun comparison between DIY scanning from your phone at sub-par, low resolution vs. professional high resolution photo digitization from the company which scanned more than 300 million photos. If you scan your pictures yourself on your ‘smart’ phone, 5,500 pictures will take 100+ hours of non-stop, non interrupted work.

It’s a common pipedream for many aspiring writers: to give up all material possessions and hit the road in search of adventure and quiet, inspirational places to write. For ScanMyPhoto’s customer Debbie LaFleiche this dream is about to become a reality.

“A few years ago, I wrote a book and after I self-published it, I thought ‘This is what I want to do.’ But I was always stuck on the logistics—how can I maintain my current lifestyle and support myself by writing? So, on my 50th birthday, I started a website and blog, Supersizelife.com, and it’s all about how I am going to completely and utterly change my life.”

Debbie’s plan is to supersize life by selling her home, drastically downsizing material possessions, buying an RV, and hitting the road. This new life will enable her to see the country, cut back on living expenses, and find lots of time and beautiful places to write.

It’s a morbid subject, but one that begs to be considered in today’s Digital Age: do you have a plan for what happens to your digital files after death?

A will often dictates what happens to physical assets—furniture, money, property, precious family heirlooms, etc.—but what about our online lives?

These days we spend (at least) half of our lives online between work, social media, and using technology to store and access our precious photos and files. In the event of the inevitable, it helps to have a plan in place so your loved ones know precisely what to do with your estate—online and off.

What to do with digital files

For many ScanMyPhotos customers, their laptops, hard drives, and cloud storage systems contain thousands of print photos they’ve sent to us to scan. Oftentimes, these digital files can include generations of photos that date back to the turn of the 19th century. These simply cannot be lost in the recesses of the interwebs or on a dusty old laptop from 2010.

We are raving fans of the smartest cloud storage app service to easily preserve and share all your documents, including photos. For more details visit Upthere, the best cloud-based personal storage app.